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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27032905">Everybody Has Feelings</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalescentdaydream/pseuds/opalescentdaydream'>opalescentdaydream</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Promare (2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:47:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,712</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27032905</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalescentdaydream/pseuds/opalescentdaydream</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Galo and Lio's first fight that's not really anyone's fault but they don't figure that out at first.</p><p>i'm venting through anime fanfic in 2020</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lio Fotia &amp; Galo Thymos, Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Everybody Has Feelings</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I don’t get this text,” Galo says. He's not sure what he’s feeling, but oh boy, is he feeling it.</p><p>“How so?” Lio asks. He huddles just inside Galo’s doorway, his winter coat still cocooning him and snow trapped in his hood. It’s twenty-eight degrees outside, his fingers are red and wet inside his mittens, and he knows exactly what Galo’s talking about.</p><p>Galo stands before him in his black undershirt and snow pants. He’s come inside maybe twenty minutes before Lio. They agreed to meet here after Galo’s shift ended, and Lio was forced to take the day off. He clocked fifty-two hours at the homeless shelter this week, and there has to be a limit somewhere. Well, not with the shelter, but with Gueira and Meis.</p><p>The undershirt clings to Galo’s muscle in a very appealing way, one that Lio notices but ignores for the moment. Galo is bewildered, he guesses? Galo guesses too.</p><p>“I mean—I don’t get it? What you’re saying is…I hurt your feelings, you won’t tell me how, but I did. And you don’t want me to apologize. And you’re sorry you had to tell me, but you did. I just—I don’t know what to do with that?” Galo says. He rakes a hand through his blue undercut. Lio wishes he could reach him and do the same, at a different time. In this moment, Galo would be glad he can’t; Lio might come away with the nervous sweat spreading across the back of his neck.</p><p>“Yes,” Lio confirms. He’s dripping over Galo’s laminate wood flooring. Galo doesn’t notice, or mind, especially since the floor was peeling before he moved in.</p><p>Galo stumbles through his apartment and into the kitchen. His work boots thump heavily, no doubt annoying his neighbors. He pulls the Brita pitcher from the fridge and pours himself a glass of water. He offers one to Lio, who does not remove his layers. Lio takes the drink and downs it over his white knit scarf.</p><p>“O…okay? I can’t hear that and not say sorry, is the first problem. I’m sorry I hurt you, dude. Uh, thank you for telling me there was a problem, and I’m sorry I did whatever I did,” Galo says, and gulps down half his water.</p><p>Lio stands quietly in place. He nods ever so slightly, his bangs brushing the bridge of his nose. “I guess that’s fair.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Galo says, absently. He stares at the text message in his hand. “Is there any way you could be…more specific?”</p><p>“Hm.” Lio searches Galo’s face and his wide, questioning eyes. He sees Galo truly doesn’t understand. There is no ploy here. “I could. I’d rather not, though.”</p><p>Galo creases his mouth. His throat is tight, just like in a burning building. Not when he’s choking down smoke, but the brief moments when he’s not sure what to do. When he prays a door frame won’t collapse before he can rush his civilians through.</p><p>“That’s frustrating. You get that that’s frustrating?” Galo says.</p><p>Lio stares back. He does. But he doesn’t say anything.</p><p>Galo’s gut is curdling and his lungs are tightening. He feels these physical sensations and knows they mean feelings, though he couldn’t tell you which ones. Instead, he paces into his couch. The cushions wheeze under his weight. Lio follows and perches on the edge of the sofa. It’s hard for him to bend in all his padding.</p><p>“I can’t tell you because it’s embarrassing,” Lio says. His cheeks are red, though that might just be Galo’s lamplight, or the windchill. Galo wishes anything about him had an obvious answer right now.</p><p>“Oh,” Galo says. He knots and unknots his fingers in his lap. There’s a lull where they hear a siren wail far beyond the reaches of Galo’s apartment, and a noisy group in the stairwell. They play Christmas music from a Bluetooth speaker or a really loud phone and sing along, though all offkey and more than a little drunk. It fades when they fumble unlocking their apartment and shut the door behind them, giggling.</p><p>“I’m not here to judge,” Galo continues. Lio huffs, and finally peels off his mittens.</p><p>Lio says, “It’s not about you. It’s about how useless it is. I shouldn’t be upset by this in the first place.”</p><p>Galo asks, “Then why did you tell me?”</p><p>“Because I had to try something to put it out of mind. This seemed like the next step.” Lio throws his hands up, exasperated. “Obviously, I made a mistake.”</p><p>Galo leans forward and wrestles his first boot off. He uses his heel to dig at the other. “Not in that way – I mean, you did when you forgot about the ‘me’ part of the problem.”</p><p>Lio squints. “<em>You</em> hurt <em>me</em>, though.”</p><p>“Yeah, but I’m a person too, dude. Fuck,” Galo says, undoing his snow pants’ suspenders. They droop around his waist in a loose red bundle. “You forgot that I care about you and don’t actually want to make you feel shitty, and that I like being your…friend and all, so yeah, I’m gonna feel bad about it when you tell me I messed up.” Galo’s voice raises as he goes on, though he’s not sure he’s allowed. Whatever it is, it is his fault, after all.</p><p>Lio pauses. He shifts out of his coat and exposes his blue turtleneck, until he shivers and hefts the coat back up to his elbows. Galo’s apartment technically has heating, but Lio’s not sure it’s ever on. Galo's body is its own furnace.</p><p>“That may be true and I’m sorry this upset you. I still can’t, though," Lio says.</p><p>“That’s…okay.” Galo muddles through the words. He scrunches his hands into the longest section of his hair. Something about it helps, just a little, while the rest of this conversation feels very much not okay. He doesn’t know how to fix everything in the current moment, and he needs to walk himself in circles alone and figure it out, though he doesn’t have much to go on. He wishes this were happening some other time when they didn’t have a free evening lined up between them. Or not happening at all. Fuck. He rented a historical drama for the night; he’s seen it five times and wanted to share in Lio’s first watch-through.</p><p>“Uh,” Galo finally says, clearing his throat, “If you wanna call this off for tonight and hang out, like, next week, that’s also okay.”</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>Neither of them moves. Well, Lio keeps breathing. Galo notices it coming out in cold little puffs but pretends he doesn’t. Maybe if they freeze, for the most part, time will too.</p><p>But then, Lio sighs. “If I tell you, you have to promise not to laugh.”</p><p>Galo’s following his every word. He nods, “Yeah, of course.”</p><p>“You have to take it seriously, because it is.”</p><p>“Whatever you need, man.”</p><p>“Also, don’t look at me.”</p><p>“Uh,” Galo twists away. He hunches over the other arm of the couch, “Sure, no problem.”</p><p>Lio starts, and stops. Galo can hear several beginnings of words drop off before they can become anything like sentences.</p><p>“Never mind, you have to look at me.”</p><p>“Okay,” Galo says. He readjusts. They’re sitting closer this time, their knees just touching. Another siren blares somewhere in Promepolis.</p><p>Lio composes himself and pulls his jacket on, fully. “You called me something. You were joking, but I can’t stop replaying it in my head. It’s not something you would know not to say, which actually makes it worse.”</p><p>Galo waits.</p><p>“It was a couple weeks ago, actually. The hope was I would forget about it before it came to this, but obviously, I didn’t. It’s going to sound…insignificant.”</p><p>In the gap Lio leaves, a gap in which he’s gunning himself up to his confession, Galo wonders if he should say something. What could make this better, or can he only make it worse? He doesn’t have time to fully form his thought.</p><p>Lio says, “It was in front of the Burning Rescue crew. We were having dinner, street tacos, I think. Do you remember?”</p><p>Galo shakes his head.</p><p>“When we were talking about our first fight? How we were more or less an even match?”</p><p>Nothing. It pains Galo, but he’s got nothing.</p><p>“You...called me ‘small-fry’. You said I was so little out of my Burnish armor.” He buries his stare into the stained coffee table before them. “I doubt you thought about it before you said it. I wouldn't expect you to.”</p><p>The physical turmoil inside Galo shifts completely to his chest, to his heart. He’s hurting that he hurt Lio, even if unintentionally. He’s hurting that Lio apparently thinks this is the best he can do. What else could Lio mean?</p><p>“I don’t know,” Galo says, trying. “I didn’t… it wasn’t… I don’t know.”</p><p>Lio sniffles and straightens his posture. He holds his chin high and, as much as he’s willing to, looks to Galo. “That’s what I thought. I’m not angry with you, Galo. I’m trying to forget and move on, that’s all.”</p><p>“So, wait, let me get a grip on this—you don’t want me to joke about your size, right?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Is it still okay to give you piggy-back rides sometimes?”</p><p>“If this is a fucking joke to you, then—”</p><p>“No, no, wait!” Galo raises his hands as Lio stands for the door and crackles with shame-born anger.</p><p>Galo pleads, “I mean it! Work with me here. Let me show you that I care.”</p><p>Lio falters and stands still. His hands are loosely balled at his sides.</p><p>“I don’t want you to forget. I think we should remember and do better. I won’t joke about your size because it’s not funny and it hurts you. If you tell me why, maybe I can stop myself from doing other shit that hurts you, too,” Galo says.</p><p>Lio still teeters on fuming. He snaps, “Do you really not see what this is about?”</p><p>Galo’s brow furrows. “I think you know that I don’t!”</p><p>“Seriously?”</p><p>“Oh, fuck off.” Galo is standing too. He tries to nonchalantly hunch, but their height difference is impenetrable. “We’ve spent all this time together after setting the Earth on fucking fire and you're still betting on context clues?!”</p><p>“Then that’s that! It’s exactly why I didn’t tell you in the first place. Nothing was going to come of it!” Lio is subconsciously arching his feet. He balances on his tip toes and levels a finger with Galo’s chest.</p><p>Galo huffs and turns for the kitchen. He sloshes half the Brita filter into his glass (and onto the counter) and chugs it. From this distance, with added hydration, he feels his energy dampen. He pours himself a second glass. He’s terse. “Fine. We’ll leave it at short jokes.”</p><p>Lio hears him, but all he has now is an outpouring of everything he’s felt since the Promare abandoned him. He wants to stomp around the room and scream. Instead, he kicks aside one of Galo’s giant boots (how big are his feet?) and paces from end to end.</p><p>Lio rages, “Maybe I don’t need someone to point out I’m not the same Mad Burnish boss anymore? Maybe I’m already faking it through this work that holds the fate of all the Promepolis Burnish? If I don’t keep them in this shelter and fed and warm then what did I do? I brought them into a city that hated their existence and took away what little power they had.”</p><p>He kicks the other boot. It goes flying and thumps into the wall. Thankfully, the other side is just Galo’s room, but it leaves a dent.</p><p>“All I have now is this little human frame that I don’t know what to do with and thousands of people looking to me for help. I keep fighting and I keep fighting and I keep fighting and I don’t know how anymore but can— will I stop? Absolutely not.”</p><p>Lio takes a shaky breath. “How could I abandon the only people I’ve ever known?”</p><p>He sinks into the couch cushions again and lets them swallow what’s left of him. Galo is there in moments. He comes closer than he has all night to the point that his broad chest is Lio’s entire field of vision. The rims lining Lio’s eyes are wet, though Galo knows better than to dry them.</p><p>“Who said that was your job?” Galo asks.</p><p>Lio looks at him with incredulous, exhausted eyes. “What?”</p><p>“I mean it! Who said all that was your job? The Burnish?”</p><p>“We did! Me! When I did this to them!”</p><p>Galo scoffs, “We kept the planet from exploding. That doesn’t put you in charge of everyone who could use some help, ‘specially when you’re just one dude.”</p><p>“We made the mess, Galo,” Lio groans, “so we clean it up – you put out fires, I keep my people safe. That was the deal.”</p><p>“And we kept up our end of it. What’re you gonna do, babysit the Burnish until they all die peacefully of old age? You’ve done enough,” Galo argues.</p><p>Lio has nothing to say. He’s thinking about it, Galo can see, in the way his nose scrunches above his pout, maybe wondering how many Burnish would outlive him and how he might fulfil his duty from beyond the grave.</p><p>“Look, you don’t have to help <em>me</em>,” Galo says. Lio, for once, looks at him without understanding. Galo goes on, “You’ve got a lot riding on you, but if you let me help it might not be so bad. Two’s better than one, right?”</p><p>Lio refuses to wipe his nose in front of Galo. He turns aside to do so. “I won’t ask you to take on that much. You’re busy with your own work.”</p><p>Galo laughs, “So I’ll come down to the shelter on my days off. It’ll be just like saving the world again.”</p><p>“You did that already. And you cleaned up the entire disaster zone by yourself,” Lio contends.</p><p>“Of course I did! It was our responsibility. I take care of survivors on the daily with Burning Rescue. I think I can help refugee Burnish that aren’t even on fire.”</p><p>Galo wraps an arm around Lio’s shoulders and supplies himself as Lio’s pillow. It’s comfortably familiar in a way neither of them expected; not this time, or the five hundred times they’ve wrapped around each other since this new era began.</p><p>“You’ll have the most energy if nothing else.” Lio nestles his cheek into Galo’s warm sleeve.</p><p>And, they stay like that. At least for a while as they settle. Or don’t. Galo’s thoughts run circles around him at all times, and this is no different. He’s keeping up as best he can, but answers slip out of his fingers as quickly as he remembers another quiet, embarrassed look on Lio’s face as he first came through the door or the change in his voice when Galo pissed him off. They’re all rushing for his attention and amalgamating into one emotional lump he can’t decipher.</p><p>Galo speaks first. “So then, the other thing is…”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“You weren’t mad at me, you were mad at life?”</p><p>There’s a pause. Lio answers, “I don’t really know. I was mad at you and decided I wasn’t, and I was mad at myself, and I was…yeah, mad at the circumstances. I still am and probably will be for, I don’t know, a long time.”</p><p>“I think that makes sense.”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>Galo nods, petting the back of Lio’s head absent-mindedly. “Yeah. You haven’t had a choice in any of this – being Burnish, powering a giant spaceship, not being Burnish. I’d be mad, too.”</p><p>“Thanks.”</p><p>“For…for what?”</p><p>“For, ah, all of it. I don’t know, for listening, or letting me yell at you? For spending the night this way when I know you made plans.”</p><p>Galo shrugs it off, “What? No big deal. I mean, if you can tell me what’s going on from the start next time, that would be cool, but I get how it happened and all.”</p><p>Lio bobs his head from side to side, smirking. “I’ll see if I can make that work.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i projected all my adhd onto galo and i wont stop</p></blockquote></div></div>
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